Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a reactor configuration for carrying out catalytic, chemical reactions and also to a method for producing it.
Many chemical reactions that are used on a large scale in the chemical industry are catalytic in nature. Reactor configurations produced by micromachining are increasingly being used to carry out such processes. The term microreactor has become established for such reactor configuration. They contain a porous body with a catalyst present on its surface.
A reference by G. Wiessmeier et al., titled Micromech. Eng. 1996, pages 285 to 289, proposes a microreactor which is constructed by micromachining. To that end, a stack of microstructured aluminum sheets is formed on an aluminum plate and is converted into Al2O3 by anodic oxidation. The surface of the structured sheets is provided with a catalyst. The aluminum plate is not porous. In this configuration, the catalyst temperature is upwardly limited by the melting point of aluminum at 500° C. The reactants pass into the pores by diffusion.